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About the time my oldest was starting Kindergarten, I began attending the annual homeschool book sale in our area looking for homeschooling options. It was around the year 2000, and I already knew a number of homeschooling families from teaching art classes. I remember one sale in particular – not because of what I bought or who I saw, but because of what I was

Nancy I. Sanders is an award-winning author of more than 100 books for children. She is also the creator of the elementary WriteShop writing curricula. I asked about her thoughts on writing as it relates to reading aloud. Q: Parents have long been encouraged to start reading to their children at a very young age to foster a love for reading. In your experience, have you found that

I have a child who loves Legos. In fact, Legos have been a regular staple in our home since my oldest son was about five – almost 15 years ago! My youngest still asks for new sets for his birthday and Christmas. And it’s no wonder! Legos are a lot of fun, and (don’t tell the kids) educational, too! Our latest Lego discovery was

When my kids were younger, we read through hundreds of picture books. Sometimes we would snuggle up together and read the books on the sofa, and other times I would read aloud at the table as the children were eating lunch. Some picture books were just fun, while others were meant to be educational. But did you know that you can plan your lessons around a good picture

When my husband and I were first married, we planned how everything would work out for us financially. We would both work but live off of just one income until we started a family; then I would stay home with the children while he continued working. But things often don’t work out as we intend, and it was a real struggle to support ourselves with only

You know it’s finally summer when you see fireflies start to light up the night. Every year, my kids (no matter how old) still try to catch them, always being careful and letting them go again. Here are a few fun facts about fireflies: Fireflies are actually beetles. There are about 2,000 species of fireflies. Each species has a unique flash pattern. Fireflies only live for

If you’re looking for a fun (and easy!) way to teach geography, SheppardSoftware.com is a site to bookmark. I was first introduced to the site when my eighth-grader was taking a geography class at our co-op about five years ago. It was very helpful in helping him remember the locations of the all the different countries. But at the time, I didn’t even consider

Learning to Read with Letter Cards Some of my biggest challenges as a homeschooling mom have involved reading. My youngest child has had an especially difficult time learning to read, so much so that I had to find someone else who could help. That’s when I learned about “letter cards”. I must admit, I don’t know much about teaching reading. My oldest child just

Google has an annual art contest that’s fun for kids of all ages! The Doodle4Google art competition is open from now until March 20th. The theme this year is “If I Could Invent One Thing to Make the World a Better Place…” Students in grade K-12 can create a drawing that illustrates this theme using the Google logo. Sounds hard? It’s not! Google makes